Will Gaines, All Things Marketing at Movement Labs, welcome. Thank you, man. Thanks for having me. So excited to be here. I am too and congratulations on launching Mainnet a couple of days ago. Thank you so much, man. What a ride. I've been waiting for it since the day I started and it's here now. It's crazy. it. want to hear the whole entire journey, but I want to kind of start out with something a little bit esoteric and we might get emotional. I'm just teasing. No. No, you said in a previous podcast and you said like a bunch of things in a previous podcast that you kind of, said it in passing, but I kind of want to come back to it. You were in a spaces with Reka and Emily Lai Emily, and you'd said something I think is really, really insightful that I want to start with because I think it adds color to the conversation. And so you said you describe yourself as a community organizer, especially from your time in politics. I'd love to hear more about that because I'm fascinated by politics and how the grassroots is mobilized. And I have a feeling, I get a sense, especially from like how I've seen you run marketing, you kind of take a similar approach to growing a community of movement. So I'd love to hear how your time in politics as a community organizer kind of colors how you've approached your growth at movement. Yeah, I appreciate that, man. So I guess there's two ways that I can approach this. I'll just go at both. So for one, if you're working on a campaign or if you're trying to get someone elected, you need to be identifying with people where they're at. So for example, when I was helping Isaac Bryan's campaign, he was running for Congress, the local Congress of California. So for people who don't know, There's the federal Congress and there's like the assembly, which is the state level Congress. He was running for an assembly seat in California. And I thought he was just one of the most passionate, like driven, motivated humans on earth. and what he spoke to and what he stood for, felt like the, the state of California really needed. And so the best way that I could help him was I started doing like clubhouse rooms. started hosting, you know, speeches and kind of talks about what his legislative policy and angles were and then going door to door and canvassing for him. So like meeting people where they're at, speaking to the situations and the issue areas that they have, and then inviting him into our spaces on Clubhouse where we were predominantly talking about Web3 and social empowerment and letting him speak for himself and kind of give people the word that he believed directly from his own mouth. that's one way to... would approach it, right? Is like, if you're trying to bring someone in, or if you're trying to, even if it's like a crypto marketing company, or if it's a infrastructure company, is like, you gotta go to people and you gotta meet them where they're at, and you gotta address their concerns and show them that you're paying attention. And so that's where I feel like those things really intersect. And then from the other side, like, when it's not campaigning for an office, when you're like working in a government office, a lot of that work is, You know, people one coming to you with problems that are very difficult to solve, very high stress, real world stakes involved, you know, people who are getting evicted, people who are struggling to get their green card, people who are struggling to get their social services or a license or are dealing with, you know, some of the terrible situations that folks deal with in life. And that created problem solving when people are in crisis, not being brought to crisis yourself, but like Again, meeting them where they're at, putting yourself in their shoes and like doing the best that you can to help them. I think was really helpful for me coming into crypto because we work in this insanely high octane constant cycle of work where, you know, there's money on the line and people are trying to get after it and they're trying to change their families lives and the stakes are high. But at the same time, we want to make sure that everyone is represented. And I think that's the final point that I would touch on that was really helpful for me at least is When I was working for Ben Allen, who's a Senator out here, I would meet constituents who are the people that we represented. And I did not agree with the way that they viewed the world. And he made it very clear to me as it other representatives who would meet me and see that I was a fireball. They'd be like, well, we work for them. So we might not agree with them. We might not be on the same side of the of the situation, but at the end of the day, we represent them. You know. they're the taxpayers, they're the constituents, and they're the people who elected us. And that really shifted my mentality, especially with the way that I look at FUD, for example. I look at that as constructive criticism. Like that's my constituent, that's a potential movement community member who's taking time out of their day to address a concern they have. So I take that stuff very seriously, and I'm very grateful for the time that I spent working in the government, because I think it informs my marketing. We are the size of countries essentially when we build these infrastructure protocols. No, pretty much, especially like in terms of like GDP. mean, it's tremendous, right? And I love your viewpoint on FUD because it's such a unique viewpoint. know, most people I think would get annoyed by it, but you view it instead as it's criticism that's important and everyone needs to be heard. And I think the community members at movement see that and they feel that. think more importantly than seeing it, they feel it. you know, from like the head of marketing, like one of the top guys of movement. And, and I think they appreciate that. And it's such a unique, it's unique and it's so time consuming. And it's, but yet it's so important, right? Barack Obama is, I don't want to get into politics, but as a community organizer, he was amazing, right? I mean, I, I I lived in Chicago around the same time that he was, he was, he was running for a Senator, for Senator at the time. And I remember seeing him on the news and I found a quote that he said that, change won't come from the top. Change comes from a mobilized grassroots. And I mean, he, he really like took that to heart, right? From the very bottom, just block by block door by door. and there's, think so many things we can learn from that in how we build communities in crypto. yeah. at the way that our community grew, right, it's very much along those lines. Like when you go to people and you give them a, a framework or you give them like a tool set where they can then go in and empower themselves, it, you go so much further. I mean, I think if personally, had we not taken the approach of let's try to open that as many doors for as many people as possible, we probably wouldn't be where we are today. But because we took the approach of. Let's try to make something where everybody has a seat at the table. And as I'm saying that if anyone's listening to this and you feel like we fell short of that, please let me know. I just think that's that's where our industry can really set itself apart because there's few industries where you can really include everyone. And I think crypto is one of the few. Yeah, I'm so pleased to have this conversation because if we go back to the beginning of movement labs, so movement, it started out with kind of an insight, That solidity is not really performing that well. It has a lot of shortfalls. What if we actually built an ecosystem around a new language, like move? And it started out quite technical with a really interesting insight. And If we were to go back in time, one universe could have been... If you guys had taken this path, things would have been so different. If you had taken the highly technical path where it's like you focus on just the language, whatever comes along with that, the technical side, which is important, but what if you just stayed there? And you didn't involve other community members? What that world would have looked like now? And I think a lot of crypto projects are a turning point where they have taken a very overly technical path and it's created a specific type of community that now that it's built, it's kind of hard to get out of. You guys, on the other hand, it started out quite technical with a very specific kind of offering for developers, but then you decided to open it up. It's like, well, why not? get everybody involved and find everyone can find a place and figure out kind of how they can contribute. And I think that's pretty amazing. Yeah, and I'm very grateful to hear that. you're touching on something that I'm very passionate about as well, which is like the tribalism and the maximalism that exists in this industry limits us. Just like it does like, you know, when we have systems of oppression that separate us in regular life, if we're not building technology that is inclusive and lowers the barrier of access, we cannot achieve. levels of mass adoption that we're all striving to achieve. Like, obviously, the tech is incredibly important. I think eventually we'll get to a point where the tech levels out. Everything after that becomes distribution. And I'll use Apple as a great example of this. Like, yes, the iPhone or the Android, they're incredibly efficient machines. But the reality is the reason that they're so mass adopted is because you can FaceTime your grandma on the other side of the world. or you can text your friend that you haven't seen in 15 years, or you can play your favorite video game or use your favorite social media. The applications that exist on top of it, the ease of use, the user experience, those are the things that transcend. If we were just trying to market these things as this highly efficient technological computer tool in your pocket, developers are gonna be really excited about that, but. you know, you're going to lose an audience. Their eyes are going to glaze over. If we went through the technical specs of the iPhone, like I'll get lost in about 15 seconds. So we have that issue right now in crypto where we have to, we, at the same time, we have to appeal to builders, right? Cause we have few and far between. need more builders, specifically move builders. There are very few of them. We need more. So it's not like I'm, going to sit here and say, we can't play that game. have to, but if we don't also appeal to mass audiences, then our industry is going to stay where it's at and I'm not satisfied. Yeah, no, excuse me. I think you're pointing to like, know, every project in crypto has kind of various audiences, right? And I think most kind of infrastructure and highly technical teams, they focus on like one specific audience, but kind of alienate a couple of other ones that are just as important. And when you guys started out at movement and you kind of considered your target audiences, I guess, what were those conversations like? Because know, move is a relatively new language. so it's not just developers, but it's like developers that have to like learn this new thing and then build stuff with this new thing. it's like, it's, that's, that's a whole different challenge on its own. I guess how did you think about your target audiences as you kind of define kind of the landscape? Yeah, think, and I've talked about this with my team a lot, right? Like it, from where I sit, the best job that I can do is to put myself in the shoes of people and try to identify just like what we were talking about with the government, right? What are their needs? What are their concerns? What is their core values, right? If we're trying to solve people's problems, we have to understand those things. Otherwise we're going to try to solve problems that they don't even have. So from a builder perspective, I would talk to our dev rel team and our engineering team and be like, Well, what are the constraints that builders are facing right now? Whether that's a sweet, whether that's an app, DOS, solidity near, you know, cosmos, wherever the builders are, like what is going well, what can we recreate and maybe make more efficient and then what's going poorly and how can we improve it? So from a builder perspective, that's the way that we really want about it. But then I also have to know as a marketer, like where my strengths lie and I, these hands can't code. I've said this. for as long as I can remember and I'm going to continue saying it. I'm an evangelist, I'm an advocate, and to your point, I'm a community grassroots organizer. So my biggest value set is that I can try to put myself in someone's shoes, but I'm never going to be able to live their experience. And so I have to rely on them. So once you start making content for folks, let them then take the torch and do it for themselves. So our builders speak for themselves. I don't try to put myself in a position where I speak for the builders because very quickly I'd come off like an idiot. What I can speak to is the, you know, the exclusivity and the, you know, the opening of doors and including everybody. And that I can speak on from an area of expertise because I've lived that my whole life. But I'm very reliant on the subject matter experts to take the torch themselves. And so, you know, as we first got started, we basically just said, look, There's areas that exist and move. There are users and liquidity issues. So we're going to solve that so that the builders that come will have a sandbox environment that they haven't already had. And then we go out and we help them with those issues. So we help them raise, we help them with their community. We help them with their marketing because you know that these are the issues that we were hearing. And I'm very proud of the work that we've been able to achieve in kind of the creating this flywheel for our builders. And we're just getting started. It's just the beginning. Yeah, and I like that point of view that you take that it's like on behalf of our builders. you ever, excuse me, do you ever envision a time when you'll stop talking about move or movement labs and solely focus on the applications that are built on move? That is a great question. think not for the time being, because we have such a like hurdle in front of us of like onboarding devs. we just launched main net and I feel like it's like suey and app dos are in the same boat that we are. Right. Like we all need more moved builders. we progress this language by the adoption of which people are using it to build programs and applications themselves. So I'll stop talking about move when it's the most widely adopted programming language for this industry. Uh, that being said, there might be something that comes next, like move to, or, know, move 17, like there might be iterations that we're using different names for it. But as it stands, no, I don't think we, we stopped talking about move for the time being, cause it's just, it's so important. It solves for a lot of issues that our industry desperately needs, which is safety. speed, security, like these things are like ease of use, dynamic NFTs, like there's so much to be done with the move programming language. I'm going to be evangelizing it for a while. Yeah, it makes sense. It is such a competitive space and I'm curious to know how you view competition. know, there's kind of competition within the kind of like the move language world, but then outside of that, there's also competition with other layer ones. How do you view competition or is that even an issue at approach marketing? For the way that I approach it, it's not, think Vitalik said it best, like our competition is not each other. It's this centralized systems that we're trying to dismantle and, know, build a new layer to the internet and kind of like a, you know, data ownership, self sovereignty world. so that's, that is who I view as competition. Yes, there are other people who might view us that way. But I tunnel vision, man, like I said, like if somebody's fighting, I read it and I take it to heart. If I think that it's something that we can add to like the prowess of what we're building, then I take it with a grain of salt. And then I bring it to the team and say, Hey, we should, we should look at this seriously. If it's, if it's coming from a disingenuous, disrespectful place, then I just take it as being part of the game. And if people are competing with us, that means we're doing something right. But, from the day that I joined the company, I really stress that. We should be collaborative over competitive because I wouldn't be living the values that I preach on the timeline. if I was competing with people, like I want to see everybody win. And as it relates to move, if there were no Aptos or SWE, there would be no movement. So it would be disingenuous for me to compete with them. Like I want to see them win too. And there's plenty to go around y'all. think it's like 7 % of the world uses crypto. Like even if we two X those numbers, we all win. So, yeah. I'm in it to win it with everyone for now. Yeah, we definitely want to grow the pie. And I was talking with someone the other day about the, think Electric Capital came out with their developer report and there's like, I'll probably misquote it, but I think it's like less than 10,000, like eight to 10,000 developers that are active in crypto. That's like, that's not a lot. And, you know, to double that would be amazing, you know. Yeah. And think about if we split that, we double it and everybody gets a little bit like we all win. There's, there's a great movie called Paid in Full and there's a quote and everybody eats B like there's no reason we can't all eat. that's how I look at it at least. Well, in some ways, think having like a... So I've spent a lot of time in developer marketing and, you know, there's kind of one approach of like, okay, here's kind of the solidity of developers. They're already in Ethereum. They understand like wallets and Web3 and, you know, that type of stuff. And then getting them to build on your chain, which is EVM compatible. Like that's kind of like one path. You guys have a different path where it's like you have to learn a new language. And ways that's like challenging, right? But it might be like, it might actually be the path that invites non web three developers in. And so in some ways, it could be easier even and grows the pie. Is that one way you guys think of it? Or is that, am I just making stuff up? No, you're not making the stuff up at all. It's actually funny because there's like an internal debate versus how I think we should onboard devs versus how, you know, developers on the team think we should onboard devs, which I love a good, you know, philosophical debate about style. When, when someone disagrees with me, I really love the approach of let's try both instead of try one or the other. So I think for me, for example, my target audience is folks that haven't learned to do it yet. because if we can get them to learn move first, it's going to be like, that's their journey now. If they already have their feet planted in a type of coding environment, we should still try. I just think that the difficulty of converting someone is harder than just getting them to start there in the first place, especially because a young mind is more adaptable anyway. But that being said, it's like, we want the world. So our way of going about it is if you code in solidity, move is safer. So you're less likely to have a re-entrancy attack. It's cheaper, it's faster. So give it a shot. if you're a Rust developer, it is not going to be that difficult because as I, as I understand it, it's roots are based in Rust. So it's not the most difficult conversion. So I think there's a lot of value add for people that do want to convert programming language. and then for the folks who don't, it's like, yo, God bless you and power to you. Like keep building the way you're building. hopefully we'll, we'll full send in a way that'll convince you to take a look at move in the future. Yeah. You guys were at ETH Denver recently. How does the approach of, I guess, how do you approach event marketing as you're, since there's kind of a, you get developers that are from Solidity or Ethereum, know, that's one path into the movement. And then you've got folks that don't know that are coming from the Web2 space and they have to learn move. But once they learn move and then they're in the movement, they're like hooked. And so from a top of the funnel perspective, approach event marketing in that way. And then I want to comment on kind of how Solana did it. Because I think you guys are, you guys I think are, could potentially follow that same path. So as it relates to event marketing, again, I come from an unorthodox background for the role that I have right now. I grew up doing nightlife events in New York. was throwing shows with, you know, I was an A &R at Sony, so I was throwing shows with musicians I would work with. We were doing like underground shows in Brooklyn, some were at venues, some were at apartments. And so I kind of grew up in this like lifestyle events business of like creating a feeling, right? And like whenever we did events, I loved the look on people's faces when they left and that was a memory formed. Like you would see like, they're not forgetting that night. that's the way that I approach our events. So they might not be the most developer centric, but I try to include a little bit for everybody, similar to the way that I approach like grassroots organizing overall. Right. I want everyone who comes to our event to see themselves reflected. So I'll do demos for builders. We I'll use our modular day as a great example. Right. So. I wanted a venue that adequately represented like the insanity of the technology and the industry that we work in. So I went with this amazing car museum, shout out to the 40 museum. So there's cars from all different decades, all different manufacturers, know, all these new cars, like just some of the coolest cars you ever seen motorcycles, helicopters, et cetera. Then we set up tables. So there's people doing demos. So you're getting to see a little bit about what's being built on movement. got plushies, merch. We got fun debates, we got serious debates, we got panels that are about like, you know, what's it like being a marketer in the industry with some points of view that you can give to people who trying to build. We have investors that are there so people can talk with the folks that are, they're going to raise from free food, free drinks. So it's this kind of like experiential event that also has a little bit for everyone there. So they leave walking away from that being like, okay, I might not know what movement does, but they damn sure know how to put on a party. And then they start learning about us as well. For our developer events, I try to make our hackathons more virtual because I think they're more accessible that way. But I know that we're trying to do more on the regional side and involve people on teaching them about what we're working on and do it in a more intimate way. But that's how I approach our major events. Yeah. I love your like multi-dimensional approach and this idea like when they leave, like what are they going to remember? You know, it's a lot of folks don't approach event marketing like that anymore. At least in crypto, they don't. At least in crypto, I find myself kind of getting stuck in a rut a little bit of like, okay, here's like, here's, you know, we're trying to attract developers. Here's the funnel here. And it's very kind of becomes like a checklist almost. And having kind of like that missing kind like that magic moment in like the customer journey, you kind of forget that or I do anyway. And so I appreciate you bringing that to my attention because now it's like, I can't forget that you can't forget that, you know. You also can't forget what you're alluding to as well, because I think one of my strengths is that I'm focused on a broad audience. But I think one of my weaknesses is that I need to hone in and that that, you know, there's a gift and a curse to everything, man. I'm sure that there's someone out there that's like, well, focus. But my brain isn't wired like that. Well, I think a really good team are people like you, like think big, and then people that are like very tactical and like get things done and like just putting them in the same room and then some magic comes out of that. So I want to go back to something you said in another podcast. Again, you said it in passing, but it caught my ear and I wanted to kind of go back to it a little bit. I wrote it down, so I want to read it. You said that when you were younger, you considered yourself an outsider and you had dealt with xenophobia. so involving everybody is really important to you. Do you feel that, I mean, it shows in how you're approaching marketing now, like bringing everyone, like the tent is very wide. You bring everybody in. I guess how, how has that, if I could call it, how has that chip in your shoulder kind of like served you in your career? Hmm. Well, I think, yeah, to your point, I think it has been a driving force in like every industry that I've worked in, right? Like the music industry, TV and film industry, government and crypto, I've tried to imbue everything that I do with this idea of like, you know, treat others the way you'd want to be treated because I was treated poorly. I think I had that ingrained in me from a young age of like, This is going to sound so egotistical, but please guys don't think I'm like an egomaniac. They say the difference between a hero and a villain is that they have the same origin story. The hero was, the villain was hurt by the world and decides to hurt the world back. The hero was hurt by the world and decides to never let anyone be hurt that way again. I'm not alluding to the fact that I'm some hero person. just, think that's the way I approach it is like, I try to live my life the best way that I can. the way that I was treated in the past, I don't want other people to be treated that way. And I feel like there's a deeper meaning to being on earth than like earning a paycheck. So if I, if that's my reason for being is that I'm going to like create businesses that treat people well, then that's a reason to be, you know, that's my hero's journey for the people who, you know, read philosophy and, you know, sociological higher, like archetypes. That's what I'm trying to do with my life. I love it. No, I love it. mean, you know, we fail to kind of acknowledge like our upbringing and how it affects kind of what we do and how we think. And and I like to bring that up in conversations because, you know, some of us use it as fuel. And you clearly have used it as fuel to open up lots of doors and opportunities for yourself. And that's that's huge. And you know, I want to acknowledge that and and tell you that's like amazing what you've done. And you've let that like, let that kind of grow in you, build in you, and now you're opening opportunities for others. You brought up storytelling and storytelling is such an important aspect in marketing. And in a highly technical product, you know, like Move, like how does play a part in how you market it? Yeah, I think it folds back into this, right? Like when I first got into this industry, the things that appealed to me most was that Ethereum was providing creators a way of going direct to consumer. I got involved around the time of like the crypto kiddies launched. So I saw this opportunity where I was like, wow, like creators can go on chain and go directly to the consumer. They can cut out middlemen. And on the same time I saw Stellar Lumen and Ripple going after kind of like the Western unions of the world and like making P2P transfers a fraction of a cost so that, for example, migrant families could move money back home without getting, you know, taken advantage of by people like Western union with these predatory fees. And so that is kind of the storytelling that got me enamored with this industry was like, wow, like this is, this could change the world. For Move, it's the same concept, right? Like we can't progress as an industry if we're having 1.5, 4 billion, $6 billion hacks every year, every month. Like we're just not gonna get to the next level of the industry. But with Move, we can. things like Ranchancy attracts, excuse me, they're less likely to happen. The amount that like Stella Lumen and Ripple were taking off from Western Union. move takes that price even further down. The transaction costs are even lower than like Solana, for example. So like we're talking about competing with the credit card companies or the world. We're talking about competing with financial institutions and money movement. That is, that is how we begin to change the world. And who knows where that goes? I know we're talking about like data ownership and privacy and governments adopting these things, what happens when the world becomes more transparent because we're operating on a decentralized ledger where all transactions are verifiable and witnessable by everyone. Like that world is going to be really fucking cool. There are scary parts of a free market. It's a scammers paradise right now, but that's why it's, the story of move is easy for me to tell because it's just, it's exciting. If you start to think about what we could enable, it's disguise the limit. I think that's the key right there. It's like what the thing enables. And I think people forget that. Instead, they focus on the features of the thing instead of the benefits of the thing. I had a conversation with Uma from Succinct, and they have a highly technical product, right? It's a ZK prover. And so a lot of our conversation was around, I've spent a lot of time in ZK and lots of other projects. And what is really unique about them that I see also in in movement labs is they make ZK relatable and very down to earth. And that's actually really, really hard to do with a technical product. Like it takes an incredible amount of skill to do that because you could go really far to where you have no idea that there's like a product anymore. And now like people get lost in like the fantasy, right? And so drawing a balance between making it down to earth yet like there's an actual utility in the product is really a kind of a skill that you have to toe the line on. I'm encouraged by the story that you're telling with Move. I led growth at Harmony when the Harmony bridge was hacked for over $100 million. And so I kind of have firsthand experience in like hacks are no fun. dealing with the FBI and having to tell them everything you know about the Lazarus Group, which is nothing because they're so secretive is like not a good time. so having like resilient programming languages is not only like a good thing for the industry, but it's just like, it could save so much heartache. And the number of people that were affected by the hack was incredible. And so, That in itself is like a story, right? It's like the negative side of the story. It's like, here's kind of what can happen if the language that your software is built in is not resilient and all the lives that are affected by it. And so it's like, that type of storytelling is super important. Well, tell us about Mainnet. You guys been building for a couple of years. then finally, on March 10th, believe, was that scary? Or did you flip on a switch as if nothing happened? Tell us about that. I definitely think it was, it was a long time coming and it was definitely terrifying because like I said, I'm not a technical person. So one of the things that's really hard for me is to like, trust other people. It's, it's not something that comes easily to me. That's why I think I overwork myself a lot. Cause I want to make sure if I can control an outcome, then I'm going to be in the trenches for it. When it comes to building technology, this is my first rodeo, right? So I built brands before I've worked. community organizing before I've done a lot. I've worn a lot of different hats, but this is my first time going through like a technological like launch and it was horrifying because I have no control. I have to literally just put my life into the hands of another and be like, yo, like I'm surrendering, know, Jesus take the wheel kind of thing. And, you know, I got to give a lot of, a lot of kudos to the team because they were You know, burdened with a lot of things that they weren't expecting on launch day that they, they hammered down, they locked themselves in a room and they, were handling business. shout out to young kind of, you know, he's, he's coming to the team new to some alpha. He's, leading the charge and doing a phenomenal job of it. I I'm so inspired by him and the way that he approaches the team and, know, communicating with different departments, just his leadership is inspiring. And just to the whole team, like. I can't help them in this moment. can't help building the chain, but I can help and encourage them and salute their hard work and seeing Cheyenne and all the chats. He's one of our dev rels, like making sure everyone knew what was going on, keeping them posted on updates and what we were working through and seeing the ecosystem rally behind them and cheering them on. was just, it's something I'd never experienced, but. You know, I don't think anyone likes to feel like they're not in control. And it was a great experience for me to be like, you know what? It doesn't matter. This is what a team is all about. And sometimes I'm going to be leading when we're like, you know, doing some of these creative campaigns. And sometimes I just get to sit back and let them cook. And this is, you know, two years in the making and there we launched a chain. Like we're, we're in the game now, you know, we're not a fake chain anymore, guys. You know, people might have their thoughts about it, but we're live. So it's amazing. And we got plans to continue to iterate and make it even more glorious as time goes on. So I'm really excited. So on the site right now, there's kind of a ribbon at the top talking about the move collective. then maybe tell us a little bit about that, because that feels like that's been going on for, that's not a new thing, but it feels like it's kind of a, now that the chain is, now you've launched main net, it's like, let's get people in the collective. It's kind of the feeling I'm getting is if I were the developer, is that true? Yeah, I think so for people who don't know, um, you know, goes back to what we're talking about solving builder problems. think fundraising for like new builders, old builders, just anyone who has an idea in life, getting people to give you money to pursue your dream is one of the hardest things on earth. Um, for any creator out there, any artists, you know what I'm talking about to any developer or founder, you know what I'm talking about? Um, and to people who don't, it is very, very hard. So we want to be able to help, right? Like our co-founder Rushi is like, I call him a VC whisperer. This guy can sell water to a well. And he is, you know, really aligned with this mission of helping builders get their dreams out to the world. We have an amazing head of BD named Ali who's, who's very helpful in this. used to work at reciprocal. So he's very attuned to like the mandates and what investors are looking for. You know, obviously we have a strong community support system a lot of builders That's a you know, a roadblock that they suffer from it's like your community isn't thriving enough with movement Like we solve that problem for you. So like if you get through to the move collective like we'll help with your community But it's essentially just making sure that if someone has a good idea if they're locked in and if they're ready for the grind and if they're gonna put the work in and You know, we do our due diligence and we feel like they're they're not capping. They're really here to grind you know, we're going to do our best to open our network to them and help them get everything they need to succeed. Because if we had had that, you know, when we started, things would be easier. But that's our job is to make their lives easier. So the Move Collective, it's an accelerator that offers, has a number of offerings for developers and teams. So I'm just reading from the site. funding support, mentorship, coaching sessions, move, engage. So that's community, collective collaboration, and then help with marketing and also networking. You know, as a builder, like all of these things are super valuable, like incredibly valuable. I remember having been part of a number of grant programs. Like one of the very first things is like company formation, like capital, you know, capital allocation company form, the accounting operations, that type of stuff is like time consuming and actually like a lot of work and hard. And builders just want to kind of build their thing and not have to worry about that. And so. Offerings like this is incredibly valuable to them. And what's unique about this, it's like within the move ecosystem, you know, and that's pretty unique. I met with a, I don't know if you're familiar with Coliseum. So great guy. That's right, that's right. And so they're like a kind of like very, very top of the funnel hackathons and they, they introduce people into the salon ecosystem with competitions, et cetera. And then the next step in the funnel is to join their accelerator and then to get funded. I'm envisioning kind of a similar thing within the move ecosystem because it's a very unique separate ecosystem from Ethereum, from Solana, and then with move, right? And it's like the difference in the language is kind of what sets it apart. And so I wonder if there might be an opportunity for like a calcium type enterprise to actually be like a standalone to help all the move language projects. Just a thought. No, I think we're super aligned on that. Like I wish I had 24 more hours a day. I don't know if you watch Harry Potter, but Hermione has that watch that can like roll back time and she can like live the day twice. Like that is something I would love to just commit myself fully to is just this like, you know, mentorship and building this ecosystem, giving them every possible resource that we can afford to. I think that is one of the things on our roadmap is to continuously build out the move collective and. bring more team, more people, more mentors, more resources, like basically just grow it out. I wish we could do that today, you know, but that is definitely in the roadmap. It's, I mean, look, it's one of the most important things that we can do as an infrastructure provider, right? Is like, how can we, how do we succeed without the daft succeeding? I think that's one of the things a lot of chains are going to be faced with. And there's going to be few and fewer chains because the people who don't adapt. and focus on these folks, they're gonna end up ghost chains and it's gonna end up being a few that succeed. So word to caution to all the infrastructure providers, know, take care of your people. In terms of kind of DAP categories, know, some chains are, you most chains are all kind of general purpose, but then they find kind of a niche that they do well in like Sonic, I think is DeFi, et cetera, right? Is, you know, apart from the move language as kind of what sets movement labs apart, tell us about like, are you focused on any specific categories or no? If you were to ask like our haters, we'd be the zoomer chain, but I don't take that as an insult. I think that's like one of our badges of honor. Like I think we are, we're, we're here for the misfits. We're here for the youth. We're here for the counted out and the downtrodden. Like we're, we're the, we're the underdog chain. So that's, that's really, I think our niche is that like a lot of people in this industry and in all industries discredit the youth. and, discredit the misfits like. You know, we get mocked online because our founders are called dropouts and because they're young and yeah, that there's a there's a radicalness and there's like a, you know, a bit of like a whistle. We're like a whirling dervishness to the youth that sometimes like they, you know, they're brazen in a way that I feel like as you age and mature, you know, you stop taking this much risk and you stop shooting for the moon as much. But I think we really love that energy and that youthful excitement. that this new age of crypto founders are bringing in. And if you look across the ecosystem, you'll see a ton of Gen Z, ton of dropout, ton of young, hungry founders. And I think that sets us apart. I don't think it's a specific to any DApp. I think it's just this new wave of crypto user hopefully is gonna be using movement and there's motion there and I love it. I've always identified as Gen Z. I might be a millennial, but. Those are my people, Let me read a tweet that you sent out yesterday, March 12th, no, two days ago. And then maybe we can end with this and then get your thoughts. So the community network for artists, activists, entrepreneurs, and devs isn't just a tagline, it's a promise. At Movement Labs, we're building a space where creativity and code collide to make web three unstoppable. Join us. So tell us about that. Like what's behind that invitation? Well, I mean, I think it's right there in the writing, right? It's like... When I joined the team and, and, you know, this was almost two years ago now, the, the idea was very rooted in builders and it still is, and it always will be. But what I said to Cooper and Rushi, which is why I wanted to join was like, they were calling it movement labs. And to me, like, what is a better endeavor in life than to be part of a movement? And like, you know, I might be drinking my own Kool-Aid here, like, but. Like that to me is like a purpose bigger than self. And so like, if you're an artist, if you're a content creator, if you're a memer, if you're a builder, if you're on chain maxi, if you're a DJ, and if you're a troll, like let's build this movement together and let it reflect your personal identity in the way that you leverage the movement. So like for me, that's going to look like a community grassroots, all inclusive, infinite garden. And to someone else, it's not going look anything like that, but that's the beauty of the movement. If it's all encompassing, it's going to be a ton of micro movements that are regional based, that are personality based, that are like, you know, authenticity based. And there's going to be parts of this movement I don't agree with, but that's a beautiful thing. I don't want to agree with everything because diversity of thought is what wakes me up in the morning. So that's kind of the way I look at it, man, like this is a movement for the people, by the people, with the people. And look, it's imperfect. You know, we're going to make mistakes. it's permissionless. So we're not going to be involved in every aspect of it, but my spirit is imbued in this project. And, that, that gives me confidence that wherever it does go, it's going to be something really special. So I invite everybody that, you know, wants to express themselves on chain, come fuck with us and learn about the movement, join the discord, introduce yourself and, And if you have criticisms, let us know. But if you have compliments, please let us know too, because we're super receptive to people who are having a good time, just as we are the people who are not. Awesome. Well, that was going to be my last question, but then another one came up. So it's kind of like question slash kind of like an insight. love, so branding is, it has so much to do with the name, right? And picking like a great name, just so much of a difference. so move is the language and then movement labs. And then now you're talking about movement as like, as a, as a kind of as a group of a collective of people kind of moving a certain way and having the same vision. And then now you're calling the move collective, which is like the accelerator. And then you've got movement, the guilds. It's like, guys picked such a good name and there's so much like extensions that you could grow with it, you know? And that makes all the difference. really does. Like the name and like the visual identity makes a huge difference in branding. So anyway, that was just a thought. If you have a comment on that, I'd love to hear it. If not, that's okay. No, think it's, it's, it's the reason I beyond the fact that like Coop inspired me in his pursuit of like, first of all, I hadn't heard of the move programming language before I talked to Coop for the first time. So he sold me. Like we spoke a few times before I offered to join. And this was like, I was the first non-technical hire. So this is like very early stage, right? But like he was talking about the move programming language so honestly, and so passionately. that I was like, well, shit, this is everything I've ever wanted to work with. and then it was called movement. So I was like, Whoa, wow. Okay. The idea that you're coming with is like this physical movement, right? Like interoperability and being for the builders and the ability to move money, move users, move liquidity. That made sense. But like, like you said, there's so many directions that I can take the word movement in that like appeal to my own personal sensibilities. And so. from a brand perspective, like I would say to any marketer out there, if you're working on a project as the head of marketing and you can't relate or identify with the brand that you have, rebrand. Because that's gonna limit you, right? Like, for example, I'll use Nike as an example. Nike on its own is not the most, like, that's not gonna inspire greatness the way that the brand has today, but just do it, will. And so that tagline, if you don't have like the name, make sure your tagline is cracked. We don't even need a tagline because we're a movement. Like I can, I can go so many different directions, but you gotta have one or the other. There needs to be a call to action. There needs to be a deeper purpose. mean, Apple had think different, you know, be different. And you, you just, there needs to be something that everyone can identify with because otherwise like the narrative is going to get stale. This is my personal philosophy. You can only go so far with a weak brand. If you have a strong brand, you can go really far. And I think we kind of showed that through the fact that we were able to launch before we even had tech. Like we launched the token, the tech wasn't out yet. And that was purely off of narrative, brand, feeling, community. And it goes to show that this industry is more than just technology. So. For me, it's like guys build a great brand, believe in the brand and also believe in what the fuck you're talking about. If you're larping or you don't actually have confidence in what you're saying, the same way it's gonna go only so far. So be authentic, believe in your brand, believe in yourself, love yourself and let's have some fun and help the world. Well, on that note, Will, thanks so much for joining the Block by Block show. This was amazing. Because you're back dude, thank you for having me. And by the way, follow Block by Block and follow Peter. Thanks Will. I got your back, man. Thanks for having me.